As part of an occasional “series within a series” I’ll be looking at shortcuts to help manage MindManager’s relationships with other programs.
With a few significant exceptions MindManager (MM) does not provide a wealth of ways to exchange information with other software, but depending on the program involved there may be other import and export options provided by add-ins or which involve third-party programs.
I’ll examine four potential scenarios for MM’s relationship with each program, looking at whether any of the following options are available and which approach works best in terms of import and export, as well as any downsides. The options are:
- A built-in approach (either within MM itself or something it adds to the source or destination program).
- Simple copy and paste.
- Third-party or another external program.
- Direct two-way sync between MM and the other program.
In relation to the last option I won’t be considering Zapier at this stage. Zapier provides a wide range of options for establishing automated workflows between applications, including MindManager. Zapier’s premise is therefore somewhat different to the relationships I’ll be discussing here and it deserves a series of posts in its own right.
I’ll begin with the Microsoft suite of programs, partly because of their obvious significance but also because many other programs which do not have a direct import/export relationship with MM can open and write MS files.
In this first part I’ll examine MM’s relationship with Word. MM has always had the ability to work closely with MS Word, for obvious reasons; the ability to import a Word document to create a map and also to export a map to a Word document have always been key features. As a result of this relationship there are a number of alternative approaches for both importing and exporting Word files. Continue reading